Officially spring. Or is it early summer? Let’s not bother to think too much. The point is to enjoy today, and the next day and any day when it feels like this day. There will be plenty of time to complain when the weather turns triple digits.
This week it was so nice I rode my bike to work. I should make this a habit, but it’s too easy to find reasons to drive my car.
I know I’m enjoying the week, the days and the minutes because I have more time. This is the slow time at my work. If I had more time all of the time, would I get as much enjoyment from my gift of free time? When my work is hectic, I might have a spare minute and look at my phone to see what to do next.
After a leisurely ride home from work, skin touched by the breeze of the nearly-night air, I turned my wheels to my gravel driveway. I could smell freesia and star jasmine from halfway down the path. The star jasmine has completely engulfed a tree that grows between my house and the nearest neighbor.
If planted strategically, I believe star jasmine could be used as camouflage for celebrity homes or sensitive military weaponry. I know there is a tree in there somewhere, but I can’t remember what it looked like. Now I have a blooming monolith outside my front door.
Normally, I would consider the jasmine as an evil invasive, but when it blooms I remember why I keep it unchecked. If this plant was a country, it would be an empire. Before it smothered every leaf on the tree, it overtook the low-lying fence by the picnic table (I also can see very little of the picnic table).
If I ever begin to complain about the plant, which I am sure I will, I will have only myself to blame. I learned it is easy to propagate by snipping off the newest growth immediately after bloom. I take a strand about two feet long, clip off the lowest leaves and tuck the end of the vine into a pot with moist soil. If I’m not feeling lazy I might dip the vine in some rooting powder. Some of the new plant starts will die if I’m not vigilant to keep the soil moist through the blazing hot summer. But if I’m careful, I might have a success rate of one in five. The same technique can be used with rose cuttings, again, cut in early spring, with about the same success rate.
I’ve planted additional star jasmine plants along the farthest fence, where it now battles for territory with another vine that has decided to grow in the opposite direction.
Spring doesn’t last forever. It smells so good on my front porch that I sat on the concrete last weekend, and remembered what it feels like to sit quietly and breathe.
There is a lot going on in the world and so much that we hear, watch or read is not good news. Much of this is not cheerful. But this bad news as a backdrop has made me grateful to be where I am, in a relatively low-crime town with decidedly friendly people. It may be miserably hot in summer, but we have amazing autumns and springs. Azaleas smell amazing at dusk as I’m walking to my car in the parking lot, or riding slowly on a day when I remember to ride my bike. In some towns, you smell more gas fumes than flowers.
My work crew is currently hosting several teachers and doctors from Kazakhstan, who are here to learn the American perspective on their professions. A few of them arrived in January and we have warned them that very soon — late May through August — their temporary home will be miserably hot.
I’ve recommended they enjoy this time while it lasts.
Meanwhile, I’ll take this advice myself.
